To hear Clayton Kershaw speak after his Tuesday outing against the Reds at Dodger Stadium, you’d be forgiven for thinking he was lamenting a night that didn’t go his team’s way.
“It was pretty evident that it wasn’t gonna be a long night for me.”
“It wasn’t a great night stuff-wise.”
“It was pretty obvious to me after the first batter that my slider wasn’t great. I just didn’t feel like I had the arm speed.”
The lefthander wasn’t telling mistruths, exactly—he lasted only 72 pitches; the average velocities on all of his offerings were down across the board, relative to his 2025 averages; he allowed hits to two of the first three Reds batters to fall behind 1–0 in the top of the first.
But that was all the offense Cincinnati would muster against the future Hall of Famer. Kershaw set down the next 14 in a row to spearhead a 6–3 Dodgers victory.
The performance was the latest in what’s been a late-career revival for Kershaw, now in his 18th season and somehow—after all the injuries, surgeries and missed time—still finding new ways to dominate. He picked up the win in Tuesday’s game by allowing only the one run in five innings, logging six strikeouts with no walks.
It was Kershaw’s fifth win in as many outings, his first five-start winning streak since 2022. It also marked just the fourth time in his career he’s had five wins in a calendar month (the last was June 2017).
In some ways—namely, the results—it looks like the Kershaw of old. And in most others, it’s a completely different pitcher compared to the one who captured three Cy Young Awards and an MVP in a four-year span during the prime of his career.
For example: Would the Kershaw of 10 years ago have taken well to his manager pulling him after just 72 pitches and five one-run innings?
“Oh, not at all. Not at all,” Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts said after the game. “I think that Father Time gets everyone, and I think that he’s smart enough to understand how many bullets he has.”
Roberts and Kershaw have worked together now for a decade, and the manager feels he has a good sense of knowing how his veteran pitcher is feeling physically based on his demeanor. When he’s “more approachable” and “not as edgy,” it’s a sign that the 37-year-old’s body is in a good place.
“I think when you’ve had the track record that he has, you can sort of go to your strengths all the time, and you seem to always find success doing it that way,” Roberts said after the game. “Just in the last couple of years, he’s been more open to doing different things, and I commend him for that.”
For Kershaw, “different things” means forgoing strikeouts and pitching to contact—soft contact, more often than not. Though Tuesday’s six punchouts saw his season strikeout rate go up, it still sits at a mere 16.3%, easily the lowest of his career. His 50% ground ball rate is his best since 2020, and his home run rate (0.7 per nine innings) is his lowest in a season in which he’s made at least 10 starts since ‘16.
Much has been made of how the Dodgers’ many pitching injuries this year—and really, for several years now—could be their ultimate undoing. At one point in mid-June, the team had 14 different pitchers on the injured list. That low point came not long after Kershaw made his season debut, and even the most optimistic projections for the Dodgers icon couldn’t have foreseen how critical he would be to the team’s hopes of a championship defense.
Shoulder surgery prevented Kershaw from making his 2024 debut until late July, and a bone spur in his toe limited him to just seven starts on the year. Offseason knee and toe surgeries kept him out until mid-May this season, and after a few up-and-down outings, he’s finally found a groove that’s provided some much-needed stability for his team’s rotation.
“The thing that’s been most impressive is his efficiency. He’s getting strike one, he’s putting the ball in play, getting quick outs,” Roberts said of Kershaw’s recent form. “I think he’s very cognizant of the fact that he only has so many bullets each night, so he’s not gonna waste them throwing balls.”
Since June 8, Kershaw is a blistering 9–2 with a 2.60 ERA over 72 2/3 innings. Embracing his new identity as a tinkerer rather than someone who overpowers hitters with dominant stuff, he’s only managed 50 strikeouts during this stretch. But he’s getting results by limiting traffic to the tune of a 1.04 WHIP, and he’s logged the most innings of any Dodgers starter over that time frame.
It’s been Kershaw’s most successful stretch in years. Only Milwaukee’s Freddy Peralta has more wins (10) since that June 8 cutoff, and only nine other starters have a lower ERA.
Lowest ERAs Since June 8 (qualified starters):
For the pitching-starved Dodgers, Kershaw picked the perfect time for a hot streak. Between June 8 and Tuesday’s outing, the Dodgers used 10 different starting pitchers. The other nine combined for a 13–14 record and 4.18 ERA. Since Kershaw’s season debut on May 17, the team is 12–5 when he pitches and 27–25 when he doesn’t.
As the future Hall of Famer has found a way to turn back the clock, slowly but surely, the rest of the Dodgers’ banged-up rotation has pulled itself back together. Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow are both healthy again, and Shohei Ohtani is now able to pitch deep into games after recovering from elbow surgery (he recorded his first win in over two years on Wednesday, striking out nine Reds over five one-run innings). Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been steady all season, and now the star-studded pitching staff Dodgers fans have dreamed of is fully operational.
If things hold steady over the next month, Roberts could have a problem all 29 other managers would envy: choosing a four-man playoff rotation out of this group. Whether or not Kershaw makes the cut remains to be seen. He was not healthy during last year’s championship run. His last playoff outing saw him record just one out and allow six runs in an 11–2 defeat to the Diamondbacks in Game 1 of the 2023 NLDS, a series in which Los Angeles was swept.
With the Dodgers in a neck-and-neck battle with the Padres for the NL West crown, that question remains for another day. For now, Kershaw is content to contribute to his team’s winning ways.
“It was a good August. Physically, everything feels good,” Kershaw said. “Everything changes from start to start sometimes, but overall, it was great, and the team got a lot of wins, which is great. It’s fun to be a part of it this time of year.”
In the bowels of Dodger Stadium, the hallway leading to the home clubhouse is lined with blown up Sports Illustrated covers featuring Dodgers players throughout the decades. Among them is a 2013 MLB season preview with Kershaw on the cover, with a story tease labeled “Generation K: Why Strikeouts Rule the Game.”
The Kershaw who led the league in strikeouts that year and won his second Cy Young Award is gone. But the one that remains today is proving night in and night out that it’s not too late for him to be the team’s savior, albeit with a completely new style.
“I didn’t have a lot of stuff, didn’t have a lot of life on the fastball or really anything … It worked out through five,” Kershaw said of his performance Tuesday. “I don’t know how much longer it would have worked out, but it worked out through five.”
If the last three months are any indication, it could work at least a little bit longer, when the Dodgers will need it most.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Clayton Kershaw Reinvented Himself Just When the Dodgers Needed Him.